Venice History Web Site
Research Sources

June 5, 2004

Researching a historical subject such as the history of Venice
and Ocean Park, California along with their amusement pier districts
takes an enormous amount of time. Secondary
sources such as previously written books, even my own, are often inaccurate and
incomplete, and historians that use them without checking the original
sources such as newspaper accounts risk perpetuating these errors. Worse
you can't always trust newspaper articles since many, especially at the
turn of the century, were content to publish a businessman's press release without
sending a reporter.
Ride owners or builders, especially with roller coasters,
often exagerated that their ride was the highest, fastest or longest. My
best advice to amusement park researchers is to examine photographs and
maps that are drawn to scale (like the Sanborn Maps) and judge for
yourself. The patent office often has drawings of how an amusement ride
works.

If I have left out various sources - feel free to E-MAIL me. This
Web Site is a work in progress. Hopefully it will benefit both serious
researchers and people who are just fascinated by amusement park history.

ILLUSTRATED HISTORY BOOKS

The Venice Library on Venice Boulevard has the largest collection of Venice
history books. However, due to lost copies, many are available at the Reference Desk only.

This is actually a history book, but since it isn't illustrated it wasn't reviewed in the
history book section. It covers the beat poets and artists who lived in Venice because of
its cheap rents and easy going beach life. They hung out in several coffee houses along
Venice's Ocean Front Walk and on Dudley where they read their poetry and displayed their
paintings..

Fantasyland: Venice Beach, California by Marc La Porto - 1998

Created by a French college student as a term paper and later published in France. It
interviewed (with photos) 27 people; entertainers, artists, musicians, fortune tellers, and
street people who inhabited Venice's Ocean Front Walk on a regular basis. Some of the people
were really weird and have unusual thinking.

MAGAZINE ARTICLES & TOURIST GUIDES

The best place to look for magazine articles is the Reader's Guide to Periodical
Literature. However, finding issues of early obscure magazines, likely requires a trip to the
Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. You would be suprised that they have nearly
everything stored in three enourmous buildings, each with multi-level basements.

MAPS

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps - available from Library of Congress and probably
at the Los Angeles Library - main library. These are available for various years
on microfilm. Known years are 1909, 1919, 1925, 1950. The original books at the
Library of Congress are enormous with indivudal pages at least 30 x 18 inches.

PHOTO COLLECTIONS

UCLA Special Collections [in Young Research Library]

Los Angeles Library - Downtown [History Deptartment]

Santa Monica Historical Society

Venice Historical Society

Santa Monica Library

L.A. County Natural History Museum [Seaver Center]

POSTCARDS

Most tourist postcards were printed in color in Germany from about 1904 to 1916, then in
in America afterwards. Collectors assure me that there are over 900 different cards
of Venice and Ocean Park. While I have been collecting since 1979 and have a medium-size collection,
I'm missing hundreds. Few Venice and Ocean Park postcard collectors have been willing to
show me their collections, so I'm not sure exactly what I'm missing. I've requested collectors
to Xerox views that they think that I haven't seen.

There were very few cards published of Venice or Ocean Park after 1940. Postcard publishers
did produce about 20 views of Pacific Ocean Park when it opened in 1958. Mitock Publishers,
the largest publisher of postcards in Los Angeles, produced nearly none of the area
from 1960 to 1980. It wasn't until the Venice Postcard Company appeared in 1979 that at
least 40 Venice scenes became available. It was formed by a photographer, who uncucessfully
tried to promote his career.
They offered street scenes of Windward and Ocean Front Walk, street performers,
roller skating, street murals, Venice's canals, aerial views, and architecturally interesting buildings.
When other postcard companies began to compete in 1985,
they offered only 2 or 3 Venice scenes on their 50 card racks.

PATENT OFFICE

The U.S. Patent Office lists patents from 1797 to present. They can be searched on-line,
but only by patent classification before 1970. To find patents by inventor or by title,
one must look at the Indexes to the Patent Gazette, year by year at a patent repository.
Luckily one is at the Los Angeles Library in downtown L.A. I've found the patents for some
of the rides on Venice and Ocean Park amusement piers.